Advent of The Noosphere

Planetary Whole System Design Science (excerpt)

by Jose Arguelles

History is strewn with examples of descents of knowledge – revelations, if you will – that often take the form of sacred texts – the Bhagavad Gita, the Torah, the Quran – to name some of the most notable. However we wish to explain them, such texts have their origin in a realm beyond the ordinary consciousness, a higher dimension. Such revelations are not restricted solely to the spiritual dimension as such. Commonplace conventions such as fire or the wheel – how did these come about? Not to mention scientific breakthroughs like the theory of relativity, about which Einstein said there is no logical way to these discoveries, there is only the way of intuition.

Finally, there are the great shifts or mutations in history or even evolution such as the rise of language, the concept of earth burial, or even the emergence of the expressive arts, not to mention the shift to agriculture, or even the industrial revolution. Such shifts involve some kind of shift in consciousness. Even notions such as a zeitgeist – a spirit of the times – imply some kind of field of consciousness that arises in numerous sites at the same time. Is there not some larger governing factor that organizes the great shifts in our evolution, especially pertaining to our consciousness, some kind of super mind or noosphere?

“The transition from mind to supermind is not only the substituting of a greater instrument of thought and knowledge, but a change and conversion of the whole consciousness.” (Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga p.795).

We may also then envision the emergence of the Noosphere as a descent of a higher and greater consciousness – a supramental descent – long anticipated by various factors in our historical process over the last five thousand years. But the shift to the noosphere will be a conscious planetary phenomenon unlike any other planetary event horizon. It will set the stage for a sequence in our evolution as distinct from the cycle of history as the rise of urban life was distinct from living in caves.

With the advent of the Noosphere we encounter an integration of intelligence – a semantic field of universal consciousness – that is collective and telepathic in nature and in which there is an overall integration of art and spirituality as a mode of higher consciousness. Such changes we may anticipate or predict, but we cannot really know qualitatively what they will be like, for we are dealing with a whole other state of consciousness altogether different from the individualized competitive consciousness that dominates the age of the cybersphere.

In dealing with the potential of the noosphere as a supramental descent, we are also talking about the liberation of the human spirit and imagination accompanied by a commonly perceived reflex knowing that our species is a planetary organism operating within a planetary whole system. In this way we may be prepared to at least communicate with other higher intelligences that pervade the cosmos with its ten billion galaxies, each with its ten billion stars and star systems.

We owe it to ourselves as a species in this moment of ultimate crisis to rise to such a vision. Taking note of where we are in the end game of the historical process, analyzing the failure of civilization in light of the inability to perceive and make decisions based upon a planetary whole system design science, we may rethink our role and place in nature, and prepare our consciousness for the advent of the noosphere.

There is no other time like the present to begin this process.

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